UA College Expands into Historic Phoenix Buildings

by Scott Blair

The University of Arizona College of Medicine needed to make a bold move in its effort to double the number of M.D. graduates and provide medicine to the most rural communities in Arizona.

After looking at expansion possibilities on its existing Tucson campus, the college chose to expand into Phoenix and position itself as a statewide school.

"Phoenix is the largest city in the nation without a medical school that graduates M.D.s, and Arizona is way behind the national average for doctors-per-capita," said Susan Guthrie, associate director of public affairs for the College of Medicine. "There are also benefits from the diversity of the population in Phoenix, since a big role of the College of Medicine is research. You need a diverse pool of people who can participate in clinical trials."

In spring 2004, the city of Phoenix approached the college to expand into three historic buildings on Van Buren Street west of Seventh Street. The neo-classically designed masonry buildings were constructed in 1911 and were originally part of a 15-acre campus of 23 educational buildings for Phoenix Union High School. Of those, only the three buildings survive.

"While some people who toured the buildings at their absolute worst said they couldn't believe that this project would work, it was really our dean [Keith Alan Joiner, M.D.] who had the vision that the buildings could be incredible," Guthrie said.

The Phoenix-based design team - project architect SmithGroup, structural engineer Paragon Structural Services and historic preservation consultant Metropolis Design Group - found that the structural integrity of each building varied dramatically.

Westernmost Building One still had much of its original wood structure inside. "It was difficult to figure out if it was possible to save that interior structure," said Robert Graham, AIA, principal architect for Metropolis Design Group. Part of the problem stemmed from multiple modifications that were made over the years. "Columns had been removed and added to a point where on the first level there were over 26 columns in a floor plate of only 7,000 sq. ft.," said Brad Woodman, principal in charge with the Phoenix office of SmithGroup. "They weren't on any kind of structural grid, so it would have been a very difficult process to fit a modern program into that structure."

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The decision was made to insert a new steel structure into the building.

Fortunately, Building Three on the east side had already been rehabilitated in 1963 with a new steel structure that was acceptable for the building's new use, Graham said.

DPR Construction, Inc. was selected as general contractor on the $19.3 million project, with demolition and abatement beginning in March 2005 and lasting over four months.

Construction will be complete by July, but the first full, four-year class of 24 students won't start until a year later to allow time for staffing up and curriculum development.

The challenge with Building Two, which had served Phoenix as its primary auditorium through the 1920s, was how to best match the 1,000-seat room with the needs of a medical college that didn't require that large of a space.
Though the goal was to preserve as much of the historic flavor of the structures as possible, it wasn't to completely restore the buildings to their exact original state, Woodman said. "These are more rehabilitations than restorations," he added.

"The compromise was, we were able to save the better part of the original auditorium inside by taking the area that had a balcony in it and making two stories of classrooms," Graham said. "In doing so, we were able to retain something of the original character."

Essentially the new classrooms are housed within a new steel-frame building built inside half the auditorium. "It only touches the historic building at a couple of drywall points," said Lew Laws, project manager with DPR Construction. "That was done just in case years from now somebody decides to put it back the way it was originally."

Woodman said the concept of the building within a building is much "like when you add on to a historic structure, you want it to be distinctive yet compatible. We separated that inside structure from the ceiling, from the colonnade and other existing elements."

Because the original floor of the auditorium was sloped, it had to be removed for the classrooms. In addition, the first floor of the new structure was partially underground to maximize the new space.

"When we dug down we found there were some footings that we had assumed to be much deeper than they really were," Laws said. "We used a product called Ramjack to provide permanent shoring underneath that then got poured over with concrete."

Normally the product is used on failing foundations rather than as an extension of one, so this was a unique application, Laws added.

Phoenix-based Arizona Ramjack was the subcontractor.

On the stage side of the auditorium, contractors were faced with an ornate plaster ceiling in dire need of attention. In the 1950s when modern air conditioning was being retrofitted into older buildings all over Phoenix, installers cut through the coffers and other ornate features in the auditorium to run ductwork and then covered it with a drop ceiling.

"We tore the lower ceiling out not knowing what we would find, and it was an absolute mess," Laws said. "Now all the plaster has been restored through highly intensive work."

Buildings One and Three both needed ADA access and updated bathrooms and elevators, but to do that would have taken up too much of the limited floor space. Instead, designers removed these functions from the historic buildings and added on modern core structures on the north sides.

These three-story masonry buildings were encased within an outer glass structure with a void space between. "The intent is to reflect light off the white masonry to make the core building glow," Laws said.

Students at the new campus will be organized into 'pods' of eight students and two faculty members, who will remain together for two years. Most of the pod areas and medical examination rooms will be highly mediated spaces with plasma screen monitors, video cameras and microphones.

"It is being designed with new learning techniques in mind," Guthrie said.

One area will house T-Health, a telemedicine system that allows for the remote examination of rural patients as well as transmission of lab results, mammograms and medical educational material.

Future plans call for the expansion to 150 students per year, which will require the construction of one or more new buildings on the 15-acre site.